I have flown, as you see, to this place in order to seek final recovery.  I could not help laughing when the excellent Princess, with much sorrow and sympathy, announced the impending arrival of the M. family at Zurich.  From evils of that kind I am safe.  No outsider can know approximately what troubles and tortures people of our stamp suffer when we sacrifice ourselves in the intercourse with heterogeneous strangers.  These tortures are all the greater because no one else can understand them, and because the most unsympathetic people believe that we are in reality like themselves; for they understand only just that part of us which we really have in common with them, and do not perceive how little, how almost nothing that is.  To repeat it, the tortures of this kind of intercourse are positively the most painful of all to me, and I am only intent upon keeping to myself.  I force myself to solitude, and to achieve this is my greatest care.  When I was on the point of taking flight, at the end of May, Tichatschek suddenly called on me.  This good man, with his splendid, childlike heart, and his amiable little head, was very agreeable to me, and his enthusiastic attachment to me did me good.  I was specially pleased with his voice, and tried to persuade myself that I still had confidence in it.

I wanted to take him to Brunnen, but bad weather delayed our purpose; still we risked it after all, when the carriage drive brought me another attack of erysipelas in the face—­the twelfth this winter.  I had foreseen all this, and therefore during Tichatschek’s stay of twelve days, was in a state of continual, painful anxiety.  This abominable illness has brought me very low.  In the month of May alone I had three relapses, and even now not an hour passes without my living in fear of a new attack.  In consequence, I am unfit for anything, and it is obvious that I must think of my thorough recovery.  For that purpose a painfully strict regime with regard to diet and general mode of life is required; the slightest disorder of my stomach immediately affects my complaint.  What I want is absolute rest, avoidance of all excitement and annoyance, etc.; also Carlsbad water, certain warm baths later on cold ones, and the like.  In order to get away from home as far as possible, and to avoid all temptation to social intercourse, I have retired here, where I have found a very convenient refuge.  I live at two hours’ distance from Geneva, on the other side of Mont Saleve, halfway from the top, in splendid air.  At a Pension I discovered a little summer-house, apart from the chief building, where I live quite alone.  From the balcony I have the most divine view of the whole Mont Blanc range, and from the door I step into a pretty little garden.  Absolute seclusion was my first condition.  I am served separately, and see no one but the waiter.  A dear little dog, the successor of Peps, Fips by name, is my only company.  One thing I had